Recongregator
“The future of mankind is not something that is bought with mouthed reverence to the past. The future is bought with violence and the execution of all that we hold most sacred.” –Xaius Orel, The Dictates of the Future Another Radical faction, the Recongregators believe that only through change can the Imperium hope to prosper, believing that the greatest threat that humanity faces is its lack of progress and terminal stagnation. Working quietly behind the scenes, the Recongregators seek to influence or engineer events that will lead to change and progress. It is a subtle game, and of all the major factions, they are counted amongst the least visible, keeping to the shadows whilst others charge into the fray. Of particular interest to the Recongregators are the Amalathians, whom they perceive as their primary opponents. In many parts of the Imperium, vast silent struggles are carried out between the factions as they both strive to change local events and bring about either a dramatic alteration or a return to the way things were. In recent times a number of Recongregators have been drawn to the Calixis Sector, their interest aroused by the notion of the Hereticus Tenebrae and the change that it may herald. Recongregator Domains Just as the Amalathians have agents spread throughout the Administratum, military, and planetary governments of the sector, so do the Recongregators. Of special interest to them, however, are the worlds of Scintilla and Sepheris Secundus. It is believed that only in the sector’s seat of power can the true seeds of change be planted, and, as a result, Recongregator Inquisitors pay special attention to the hives of Scintilla. Equally, the mining powerhouse that is Sepheris Secundus has been identified as having a unique significance within the sector, and the faction suspects that there is something hidden on or about this world of great importance to the progression and reform of the Imperium. Recongregator Operations Much of the faction’s time and resources are spent in opposing the Amalathians; where they try to halt a cascade of events that would bring about change, the Recongregators maneuver to ensure such events occur. At every turn, they seek to break the Amalathians’ control, attempting to let events progress “naturally” or, when necessary, to give things a “little shove” to ensure matters come to a head. On the feudal world of Acreage, this very dance has been played out for countless years. The Amalathians try to suppress progression and reform, maintain the line of the high king, and heavily restrict off-world contact. At the same time, the Recongregators seed new ideas, hopes, and practices with the locals or smuggle in off-world technology in the hopes of altering the world’s destiny. All this, of course, is conducted during the execution of their Inquisitorial duties through discreet means, and it is unlikely that any, even within the Conclave, are aware of this silent conflict. It is known that the Recongregators have taken an interest in the affairs of Iocanthos, specifically in Seth the Voice and have sought to ally with his cause. So far, this has been prevented by their enemies. 'Recongregator Inquisitors' Drawn to the ideals of the Recongregator, Inquisitor Lucius Fulcio is a notorious firebrand of the Ordo Hereticus and a flamboyant voice within the Conclave. His righteous zeal, however, hides a subtle and cunning mind capable of charting the course of events from a single happening and determining their ultimate outcome. This canny knack first became apparent during the fall of the Golden Despot on Sisk, where his action in saving key individuals from the fire and ruin of that time lead to the world being reborn years later into a paragon of Imperial service. Actions like this have earned him great respect and trust by other members of the faction, a respect he uses to manipulate other Inquisitors and their acolytes to unwittingly do his bidding. Also counted among the ranks of the Recongregators is Inquisitor Llor, a minor, though long-serving, member of the Conclave and the Ordo Xenos. Llor was first drawn to the sector because of its proximity to the fringe and of the exciting possibilities such closeness could offer. Through his time in serving the Holy Ordos, he has come to realize that the Calixis Sector could well be even more important to the future of the Imperium. He believes the appearance of the Tyrant Star is a sign that events are about to unfold that will spread across the segmentum and beyond. It is therefore his intention to wait, watch and learn how these ripples can be mastered and ultimately turned to the favor of the Inquisition. 'Recongregator Secrets' The greatest secret the Recongregators possess is not their own at all, but rather the secret that the Amalathians have uncovered about the Tyrant Star. Unlike the Amalathians, it is a truth that they have only glimpsed and one that they suspect would not be favorable to any of the Inquisition’s factions should it become known. Thus, they are mostly concerned with further investigation across the sector, gathering what pieces of information they can. They are not merely trying to counter the Amalathians’ ambitions, but are attempting to discover whether behind the secret there lurks a darker, sinister, hidden truth. 'The Doctrine of Mind, Flesh, and Iron' The predominating doctrine amongst Recongregators within Ordos Calixis holds that the roots of the Imperium’s stagnation can found in three primary places: in the conformist minds of its rulers and citizens; in the stagnant blood and wasting bones of its people; and in the fear of its own technology. The tri-fold Doctrine of Mind, Flesh, and Iron diagnoses “a disease of repetition and dwindling variation amongst all manifestations of man’s endeavour.” The ideas and understanding of even the greatest minds is weighed by tradition and convention. The blood and bodies of humans have become shackled by drudgery, and the blood of its elite has become poisonous through inbreeding. Once mankind created wondrous machines which subjugated the impossible to its will; now, all is consumed by fear of new knowledge and innovation. Though not all Recongregators accept the implications of the Doctrine of Mind, Flesh and Iron, it has inspired a number of undertakings by those who do, including the genetic manipulation of House Koba of Malfi, the protection of The Great Library of Knowing, and the supply of forgotten data fragments to the Cult of Sollex, the full consequences of which remain unclear. The Rise of Drusus Drusus---warrior, visionary, saint, whose rise to greatness is the story of the birth of the Calixis Sector itself. The history wrote in seminaries across the sector tells of how Drusus came to the untamed stars and nebulae that would become the Calixis Sector as a general in the staff of Lord Militant Angevin in his crusade to carve a new domain of the Imperium of Mankind. The stories tell of how the enemies of the Emperor sent terrible assassins against him and dragged him down amongst the dead, but the Emperor, not accepting the death of his servant, destroyed his assailants and allowed Drusus to live again. His return from death remade Drusus, and from that day his story is one of triumphs, brilliance, and inspiration. In the decades that followed, Drusus threw the enemies of mankind back, took command of the crusade in the wake of the great Lord Militant Angevin’s death, and forged the Calixis Sector by his will. There is another story, a story that is known in part by few and in whole by none. It is a story bound with lies, so that even the great Lords of the Holy Ordos Calixis do not know where truth begins and lies end. They know only that it is made of both, of truth and lies bound into a knot. It is a story of an old man of weakening health and a mundane mind given command of a mighty Crusade by virtue of old blood and the favour of dusty traditions. Under his failing will and weak strategies, millions died for little gain, and the forces of the Imperium were shamed. It is said that among the Inquisition were those unwilling to see such blood split to no end, who watched the pitiful scrabbling of a so-called crusade amongst dead stars and hateful worlds and decided that it could not be allowed to continue. These watchers picked another to be the hand of destiny, one with the will and personal power to forge mankind’s future amongst the unforgiving reaches of space. These Recongregators, it is said, made a deal with the darkest of powers in order to meet their ends. If this is to be believed, it was they who saved Drusus and began the whisperings of his favor in the sight of the Emperor, they who wielded the knife that removed the old and made space for the new. The story says that the Calixis Sector was born of their will and that Drusus was a saint not of the Emperor’s making but at the hands of hidden powers who charged a heavy price for their aid. Others respond that if the future need be bought by a lie, then it is a small price to pay. The Manipulation of Malfi The hands of Recongregator agents are filthy with the stinking blood of dire mistakes that have been made in trying to wield Malfi as a tool for sector-wide change, but the faction’s manipulation of the bloodlines of the Malfian nobility remains its greatest work---and its most dire shame. The nobility of Malfi has always been rotten, ancient, and wicked long before the coming of the Angevin Crusade. Since the rise of Scintilla as the dominant capital of the sector, Malfi’s nobility has become increasingly bitter and resentful. In this darkly brooding feud, the Recongregators saw an opportunity to create a force for change in a sector becoming too comfortable in its newly acquired stability. The key, they felt, was in the old blood of Malfi, a lineage and stock with a vast history of scions great and terrible down the years. The Recongregators saw in these dynasties a tool they could use, and in doing so embraced a vile heresy long forbidden. With the aid of rogue elements within the Adeptus Mechanicus, a powerful Recongregator cell poisoned members of several noble families with gene-locked viral agents that would release their potential by augmenting their genetic makeup and sowing the seeds of the same in the next generation. The intent of the manipulation was to breed a great line of charismatic and powerful individuals who would wrest control of the sector away from a course doomed to stagnation. Matches between various infected bloodlines were engineered, and the resulting progeny were monitored over the years. Each generation was more changed than the last, but without warning, the experiment slipped from their grasp. Records were destroyed, adepts were killed, and those Inquisitors closest to the project were found dead or missing. The culprit responsible remains unknown to this day. As the years progressed, it became patently apparent that the results were, sadly, not what was intended, and too late the Recongregators began to realise the grave error of their choices. They had unwittingly committed a sin from humanity’s ancient past. The products of Malfi’s manipulated noble bloodlines were monstrous. Though they bore no marks of mutation, these men and women were near genius exemplars of cunning and viciousness and the guessed-at names of those noble lines most affected ring now with infamy: Sinderfel, Belasco, and Koba. None outside a few Inquisitors know of this secret atrocity. The Recongregators have taken great pains to cover up this sin over the years, and to combat the evil it has wrought, but even they cannot guess at how many have been born of the tainted blood of Malfi. The Riddle of the Logicians The Logicians are a conspiracy of so called progressives inspired by a proscribed doctrine outlined in the pages of In Defence of the Future: A Logical Discourse. An agglomeration of merchants, hereteks, and nobles, the Logicians hold the heretical belief in the importance of progress. They pursue technology and forbidden knowledge in the hope of restoring mankind to the god-like state it once held in its lost “golden age.” The cult’s activities in the Calixis sector are centered on the hording of power and exploration of forbidden knowledge. The riddle of the Logicians is whether it is the Recongregator inspired creature it seems; even to those of the Recongregator doctrine do not know whether the Logicians are one of their untamed monsters loosed on a wounded galaxy. The great mystery in the matter is whether or not the Logicians are a creation of a Recongregator’s scheming. The spread of the tech-cult through the dissemination of an idea rather than demagogues and fanatics is one favored by Recongregators and seen in the corrupting proliferation of the text In Defence of the Future: A Logical Discourse. The overt doctrine of progress at any price and obtaining lost and forbidden technologies through dealing with hereteks, the most ambitious and mercenary of the Commercia, and the nobility all reek of Recongregator influence. The only problem with this view is that it the evidence bears little chance of it being true, no matter how much some in the faction might wish it so. It is a riddle that grows all the more knotted when it is considered that even powerful Calixian Recongregator Inquisitors like Astrid Skane, Lucius Fulcio, and Lhor know of no influence their kind have exerted over the Logicians. Also the past actions of the heretical tech cult have proved to be both damaging to individual Recongregator plans, and served as an open case in point for rival factions of the perils of such revolutionary thinking. The solution to the riddle must therefore be either that the Logicians are the product of parallel evolution---a cult whose doctrine is something akin to an extreme form of the faction’s own---or that it was once a cat’s-paw grown to a power and life of its own. Some feel that the Logicians are perhaps the product of some unseen and unknown Recongregator plan of unparalleled subtlety, although others in the faction condemn this theory as no more than dangerous hubris. 'Current Conspiracies' “You spit on me and call me mutant, twist, freak and what of it! Have I not strong arms to serve the Emperor, have I not a heart that beats, a mind that wills, have I not the soul He gave me, pure and clean beneath this rough flesh? Insult me and mock me if you will, but it is for Him I fight, not you. And in my death before Him I shall go, loyal servant of the Throne with His enemy’s blood on my hands!” –“Sergeant” Urak Ironback, 17th Penal Legion, Leader of the Forlorn Hope at the battle of Smeltery Complex Gamma, The Tranch War The nature of the Recongregator philosophy spawns endless plots and endeavors, and the presence of a number of powerful Recongregators in the Calixis Sector means that it teems with manipulations and grand designs of change, many of which are inevitably stymied by inertia or thwarted by the machinations of other power groups. Chief amongst the concerns of Calixian Recongregators is the fate of the seat of Imperial power on Scintilla, and stalwart Recongregators seek to thwart the activities and dominance there of their arch-rivals of the Amalathian faction. The Lucid Concern The chief focus of most Recongregators in the Calixis Sector is Scintilla, nexus of governance and focus of the power and traditions of the Imperial rule in the sector. By their nature, Recongregators tend towards working alone without coordination with like minded peers, but the concentration of tradition and power draws the attention of Recongregators like insects to a naked flame. They devote special attention to the infiltration of the Lucid Court and the circles of influence around Sector Governor Marius Hax. As the embodiment of Imperial authority in the sector, Hax is a disastrous ruler from the perspective of Recongregators, being both highly conventional and obsessed with the maintenance of order and Imperial tradition. The fact that Hax’s authoritarian streak and reasoned loathing of change has seemed to drift into paranoia and despotism is of critical concern. Desperate operations to destabilize Hax’s power base amongst the planetary defense and enforcer forces have so far proved fruitless, while the sphere of influence around the Lord Sector has proved impenetrable to infiltration. A number of Recongregators are becoming increasingly desperate to loose Hax’s stagnating grip on the sector and have banded into a cell known to its hidden membership as the Lucid Concern. Though they have yet to determine a course of direct action, the Lucid Concern is united in the absolute belief that the longer Hax’s rule is allowed to calcify into immobility, the more extreme the solutions that can and should be contemplated to end it. So far, the group has been held back by the fear of accidentally destabilizing the entire sector in the process. The War Within The war fought against the stabilizing influence of Amalathian Inquisitors has been waged in the Calixis Sector since the sector was founded. It has been a long and bitter struggle in which the Amalathians have the upper hand at present. The conventional and change-resistant rule of Sector Governor Hax and the relative stability of Imperial rule throughout the sector has smothered the potential for change. While many Recongregators focus on breaking Hax’s power base, others have focused on areas distant from Scintilla’s influence. A key secret battlefield between agents of Recongregator Inquisitors and servants of their Amalathian rivals is the feudal world of Acreage. Lone agents and hidden Acolyte cells have thoroughly infiltrated the populace and slowly begun to spread new ideas. With the ground laid, they have begun to smuggle technology and weapons into the hands of elements resistant to the rule of the high king. In return for these manipulations, enforcement cadres trained by Amalathian Acolytes root out sympathizers of the new ideals and drag away rebellious elements---while the high king is watched over by bodyguards sent by Amalathians within the Ordos Calixis. Unknown to the Amalathians, though, is the fact that among their Acolytes in the king’s court are a few who wait the command of their Recongregator masters to remove the barriers to change and let the transformation of Acreage begin.